IAM2316 – Gresh Shares on How Embracing Your Authentic Self Unlocks Success

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And this is a special episode of our I AM CEO Podcast.

And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet, so to speak. I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to document my journey into starting what is now called BlueStar franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of sub site within CBNation called Franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But just wanted to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this.

Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of FBA, the Franchise Brokers Association, that it'd be really cool to document your journey going through and building this out.

I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises.

But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there.

So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the first couple of videos that have been created.

But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube, check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where we're going to post this.

So I'll have that information that's available to you. But regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building, continue to do your thing.

The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build and needs you to be your unique self.

So make sure to run your own race, because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Gresham Harkless 01:26

Hello, hello, hello. This is day 15 of the Franchise Brokers Conference and, well, day 15 of me starting the business and I'm at the Franchise Brokers Conference.

So I'm actually in the hotel room doing this recording and it's a little bit different just because I'm in a different place.

Yesterday was the first day of the conference and it was a lot, there's a lot of people that were in the room.

I imagine it was a lot of franchisor. It was some franchise brokers, I imagine, and of course just some other, like other people as well too.

I do know that people want to connect with franchise brokers. I think that's the thing that they want to do.

But what I realized more than anything else is I say on my podcast, if you run your own race, you can't lose.

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And I think that as you start to try to compete per se, and I'm a real big believer in coopetition, that you're not competing against people, you're cooperating with them, you're working together, but at the same time, they're competition with other brokers.

I realize that you have to lean more into who you are. It doesn't matter, who you try to be, you ultimately are who you are.

And the advantage I have is that I really love creating content. And I'm not a content creator because I consider to be a content creator. I've always felt like I was a journalist at heart.

So while I approached this venture, and this is kind of like the vision I had for Blue16, where every time I found an opportunity to pursue is to approach it from a content creation standpoint.

So that's ultimately what I'm really trying to do, is trying to lean more into that. I think it became a lot more evident as I went through this process and we had the dinner, we had a kind of meet and greet followed by the dinner.

And I remember one of the people for the association said, hey, this is a big room for you to be in, and if you need introduction to anybody, definitely let me know.

So I felt like as a franchisor, you want to get to know the brokers because part of what, all of what we get paid is a part of the marketing expense for them.

So they're investing in marketing and doing these things so that they can get higher quality candidates.

And our job is to make sure that we find the right brands for the people. But I also realized that one of the segments I really want to focus on is probably not going to be a good fit for these more established brands.

But I have an idea of who these established brands are and who might be the best fit for them.

So it's really starting to kind of click as far as, like getting a little bit more awareness around the brands.

It's important for me to kind of continue to kind of lean into that to see what's going to happen. But outside of that, miss being home, obviously miss those things.

But I'm excited because one of the things that I really remember when I started my business is said, hey, I'm not sure if this is going to work, but it's not going to be because I didn't work hard.

And I think the difference between me now and then is that my working hard is going to be different. It's going to be a lot more on the content creation standpoint side.

But I believe that work ethic I'm going to bring to the content creation and being in his rooms, being with the people, the brokers that were doing like awesome things and you could tell they, they were successful.

The brands wanted to talk to them, they wanted to rub elbows, they wanted to get to know them. What I realized is that getting a taste of that actually motivated me to kind of drill down a little bit more on who I am, drill down more on who I'm going to be targeting, how I'm going to make that happen.

So it's just an execution game, after that, that's what people, don't end up doing. Can you execute? Can you execute? Can you execute?

And have an idea of who I want to focus on and to target and to just make that happen. So, yeah, that's basically it for today. I'm probably going to do some other recordings maybe at the end of the day, but yeah, I'm just going to make all that happen.

Also, Alex Hormozi’s book, $100M Leads. Check that out. It's a great CEO hack. It was talking about building the personal brand, how he was not wanting to do that, how I've not necessarily wanted to do that, but how that opens up so many opportunities.

So I'll lean into that and just go from there. And this is Gresh signing out. I'm actually going to go do a workout because it's sponsored at the event.

So I'm super excited about that, get my mind and my head right, do some meetings with Blue16 and then hop into the conference today.

Outro 05:32

Please let me know if there's anything I could do to help. And of course, looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

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